‘In a case in the
Natural History Museum lie the sparse remains of shooting stars that have
embedded in the earth, solemnly labelled “fragments of former worlds,”’
reported by Jacquetta Hawkes in her moving snd poetic topographical history of
Britain, A Land.
The Milky Way by CM |
A second 'earth-like' planet, older than our own, has been discovered in the galaxy: excitement about colonizing this distant rocky world is gripping many who have an eye to the main chance, as the human ability to asset-strip another world through our greed hoves into view again. However, there is a draw-back. Scientists are viewing this new planet now as it once looked in 615CE - a mere 1400 years ago. The timeslip involved between cup and lip may be sufficiently wide to prevent any such colonization, we hope.
In every age,
fragments of former worlds are alive within the nesting generations alive at
one time, from great-grand parent to great-grandchild. As successive generations grow older and die,
some of these fragments are forgotten, while others stick out like markers,
leading to who knows where. There is
nothing more poignant than the detritus of those who were alive and have been
gone for some time, just as archaeologists find who dig up items whose use has
long been forgotten, hazarding a guess as to their purpose, so as to compose a
label in a museum.
What fragments of
former worlds are you hosting? Not just
granny’s biscuit barrel or the neolithic hand-axe you dug from your garden
while laying the foundations for shed, but the deeply embedded fragments within
your consciousness that are the gifts of memories not yours. For there is a department of our psyche that is a
true museum - a word originally meaning ‘a place dedicated to the muses.’ Within that museum of the soul, we carry
ancestral memory, the blueprints of knowledge and skill, the atavistic remnants
of what once blazed glorious with life but which is now merely dust waiting to
be reborn. These remnants often lie
dormant until such time as we add a liquid ingredient that reconstitutes memory
in a remarkable way: this happens in infinitesimal moments, triggered by a
scent, the line of a poem or the view of a landscape. Then, hologramically, the memory stirs back
into life and you are suddenly living a memory you can never have known in your
present form.
The Mound of Wonders from The Celtic Shaman's Pack by John Matthews |
It is almost as if
you were part of a set of Matryoshka Russian dolls, nesting one within the
other and you are resonant with someone before or behind you. The fragments of former worlds stir and
reconstitute themselves in your soul.
These ancestral memories come in many forms: sometimes as true
knowledge, sometimes tinged with apprehension, at other times with a neutrality
of vision that doesn’t quite develop into understanding. Yet when we give this
fleeting impression the time and space to reveal itself, we find we have a
window that opens wider.
We think of
ancestors as only being human, yet we have ancestry and kindred that go back
through every single living being, right
back to the protean stars whose remains were once so quaintly labelled
in the Natural History Museum in London.
When we begin to consider this prospect of our wider ancestry, then the
Matryoshka doll effect changes shape.
Embedded and encoded within us is not just the matter from which
universes were and will be made, but also the memory of those universes also,
past and to come.
When we begin to
think of ourselves as museums of the future, not just of the past, we gain a
very different way of considering the world in which we live, and maybe we
shape our behaviour in different ways.
While our present fashions and customs will undoubtedly seem out-moded
by our descendants, there is that within you that they will find of value in
times that we cannot yet imagine. When
you are dust, your prayer for them can still be revolving, waiting for that
moment when their need, or their lack of vision, requires something that only
ancestry can provide. Those precious
fragments of knowing or understanding that you have hosted, can leap beyond the
generations to become living guidance that shapes worlds yet to be.
You too leave your own trace in the universe, especially when you hold in mind all who share it with you:
Recognize
your companions and give them honour,
For
they stem from the same source as yourself.
Out
of every generation we have been called as seekers, as children of wisdom.
It
is right to remember how your quest began, the books that you read,
The
wise words of the teachers that replied to your simple questions.
But
books and teachers are not the only guides. In the silence of your heart,
In
the watches of the night, you have closed your eyes and discovered
That
your companions, your sisters and brothers, have been praying with you
eternally.
Now
that you are one in understanding,
You
can make the journey and achieve your quest.
-
adapted by Caitlín from the Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth,
Corpus Hermeticum